Posts Tagged ‘post-apocalyptic’

The book – one of King’s most beloved works – is essentially a story of good vs evil, in a post-apocalyptic setting. It was initially published in 1978 and then reissued including parts that had been cut from the original publication (for financial reasons). In the later version, the setting was moved from 1980 to 1990. It was the later, bigger edition which I read, which came in at over 1300 pages. So a big brick of a book!

The books starts with a man made plague sweeping the earth and killing most humans, although a few remain immune. After the plague come the dreams – people dream of a faceless man who terrifies them, and an elderly lady who they see as a saviour. Two groups form – followers of the faceless man – Randall Flagg, and of the elderly lady – Mother Abagail.

The scene is set for an epic battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil; between God and the Devil or certainly at least between their emissaries on earth.

The story has everything – the supernatural, horror, human relationships and the gamut of emotions – there is love, hate, fear and despair, hope and friendship. There are unlikely heroes and tragic villains. It’s epic in every sense. I thoroughly enjoyed it, although on balance I still prefer Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King, which I read earlier this year.

The Stand is a wonderful book though which really drew me in, and I really came to care about a lot of the characters. Stu Redman was my favourite character in the whole story and I also have a soft spot for Nick Andros. It took the me the best part of two months to read, which is a LONG time for me! But it was worth it. Highly recommended.

Margaret Atwood specialises in what she calls speculative fiction (and what most of us call dystopian fiction). In this book, – the first in a trilogy – she introduces us to Snowman, a man who has survived the apocalypse and is now living in a tree with a few meagre possessions. He is somehow responsible for the children of Crake (I don’t want to explain too much about this as it will give away vital plot points), who in turn do their best to look after him. Stripped down to it’s bare bones, there is not much to the plot – Snowman decides to walk to somewhere where he knows there should be food and weaponry available to him, and then comes back again. However, in between the chapters telling the (future) present, are chapters where the story of what exactly happened to Earth is explained.

Atwood explains the role of Snowman’s childhood friend Crake, and Oryx, the woman they both loved. Their teenage pre-apocalyptic world is one of strange animal hybrids, violence and child porn as everyday entertainment, and communities divided into gated compounds, separate from the dangerous ‘pleeblands’ where everyone else lives.

I think Margaret Atwood is a genius, I really do and I have thoroughly enjoyed other books by her. But somehow this one took me a long time to get into. The story is fine – yes, not much happens, but it still has enough to keep it interesting. But I couldn’t help a small sense of relief when I reached the end, and I think it may be because I couldn’t really identify with – or even much like – any of the characters. Snowman is about the most sympathetic, as you would expect given that the story largely focuses on his point of view. Crake was a hugely intelligent, but revolting example of a human being, and Oryx was cold, cruel in her own way and too far removed from the reader for me to care much about her.

I do have the other two books in the series and will probably read them at some point, but for now I am looking forward to taking a bit of a break from Snowman’s story.

Several thousand asteroids hit the UK and Britain is decimated. In the fallout, Ed Hill is separation from him wife and two children and he knows that his only chance of survival is to span the 550 miles that divides them. But with cities in ruins and no transport, he will have to run the distance. Together with a small group of survivors, Ed sets out on his long journey, with no idea of whether or not they will be successful…

On paper this book ticked all the right boxes for me – it’s post apocalyptic, it’s a dystopian novel (one of my favourite genres) and it’s set in the UK. And in many ways, it is a good read. Certainly it’s pacey and exciting – the story has twists and turns and it ket me interested,,,but for all that, I never really felt able to lose myself in it. I think the main reason is that I was not able to connect to the characters. It’s narrated by Ed himself, a lazy husband, giving the minimum amount of effort to his marriage and the raising of his children. He loves his family but he can’t be bothered to put himself out in any way for them. Only when he is faced with losing them forever does he realise how much they really mean to him. The other characters on his journey are basically a bunch of stereotypes, who we never really get to know beyond surface level and for that reason I didn’t really care what happened to any of them.

I did enjoy reading about the people they met on their journey – some good, some bad, some helpful, others with evil intentions, and the resourcefulness that Ed and his companions had to summon up in order to get out of certain situations. Overall though, while I can’t say that I actively dislike the book, I can’t say that it ever really struck much of a chord with me.

The world is burning, civilisation is collapsing and the human race is in danger of being wiped out…a mysterious disease known as Dragonscale is sweeping the planet – nobody knows how it started, but everyone thinks it will end with the destruction of mankind. The disease starts out as swirling patterns on the sufferer’s skin, and eventually those with it burst into fire and are literally burnt to death. It doesn’t take long before vigilantes roam the streets killing those affected in an attempt to rid the world of the disease.

Harper Grayson finds out that she has Dragonscale at roughly the same time as she discovers that she is pregnant. Her husband Jakob abandons her, and in fear of her life, Harper flees to try and find a place of safety. She is taken under the collective wing of a group of fellow sufferers who have set up their own community known as Camp Wyndham, where they believe they have found a way to, if not cure Dragonscale, at least control it and even use it to their advantage. One of the group is John Rookwood, known as The Fireman. Enigmatic and single-minded, John protects the group and has special skills of his own for using Dragonscale to defend his community. But danger and hysteria lurk within the camp…

I had previously only read one book by Joe Hill – Heart Shaped Box – which I thought was okay but not brilliant. I would probably not have bothered with any more of his novels except that dystopian and post-apocalyptic novels always intrigue me, so I gave this one a try. And wow! am I glad that I did!!

It’s a big brick of a book, at just shy of 750 pages. Sometimes I can get a bit impatient with such long books, but I seem to have got lucky with a couple this year (earlier in the year I read Donna Tartt’s ‘The Goldfinch’ which I also loved), including this one. The writing is engaging and there’s always something to tease you into reading just one more chapter, and oh go on there, just one more…

Some scenes were particularly poignant – crazy as it sounds, one of the scenes that sticks in my head is when Harper gets brief access to the internet after weeks of having none. She goes to Google only to find that it is no longer there.

There’s a lot of characters in the book – some I loved, and some I absolutely detested, as I am sure was the intention of the author. Harper was a feisty heroine – the best sort actually, as she only realised her own strength of character when the chips were down. found her obsession with the film Mary Poppins a bit odd but I’ll let it go!! The Fireman was exasperating and antagonistic, but fiercely protective of those he cared about, and his bravery knew no bounds.

The story seemed to move quite quickly for me – that is there was always something happening and it didn’t lag at all. I’m not going to spoil the ending, but I liked it although I know some reviewers were disappointed.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes dystopian novels. It’s well worth your time reading!

This book was written in 1957, and set in 1963. Nuclear war has wiped out the Northern Hemisphere, and radioactive winds are making their way down to the Southern Hemisphere. The people living in the southernmost countries know that when the winds reach them, they too will die.

There are five main characters in the book, which is largely set in Melbourne, where people are trying to go about their daily lives in as normal a way as possible. People continue to go to work and in many cases, continue to plan for a future which they know they will never see. One of the characters is American Submarine Captain, Lieutenant Dwight Towers, who was in Australia when war broke out. He knows that his wife and children back home in America must be dead, but he cannot accept it. He forms a friendship with Moira Davidson, a young woman who drinks too much and parties too hard to blot out her anger at her imminent death due to a war that her country had no part of. Peter and Mary Holmes are a young couple with a baby daughter, and the cast of characters is rounded out by John Osbourne, an Australian scientist. When Dwight’s submarine is commissioned to investigate radio signals coming from Seattle, Peter and John are part of the staff who go with him.

I enjoyed this book, but can’t help feeling that it is somewhat dated now. I would like to believe that in the face of such horror, people would still remain courteous and civil, and would continue to keep living as normal a life as possible – but I just don’t see that happening. It seems more realistic to imagine that there would be widespread panic, and that chaos and anarchy would descend. All that most of these people – Moira excluded, although even she seems somewhat accepting of her fate – seem to feel is a vague sense of sadness. For example, Mary Holmes seems more concerned with the prospect of her baby daughter catching Measles than dying of radiation.

And yet, it is this sense of normalcy, of routine, that lends the book a chilling air. People carry on, because what else can they do? A mother won’t stop worrying about her daughter getting an illness that can be avoided, just because a far bigger problem is on the way.

There were moments of real poignancy; when John Osbourne buys a Ferrari that he can’t really handle, and takes up motor racing – because why not? (It is not giving away anything too spoilerish to say that the motor race near the end of the book was one of my favourite parts.) Dwight Towers goes shopping for gifts for his wife and children, knowing deep down that he will never be able to hand them over. It was the moments like this that really made me think. It’s always worth bearing in mind that the book was written during the Cold War, when nuclear warfare was a very real fear for many people. It did make me think – what would I do? What would you do? Try and complete some kind of bucket list, sink into a deep depression, or just try and carry on as normal? Who knows? (And hopefully, we will never have to know.)

As I mentioned earlier, the book has not aged particularly well, and I found it hard to believe that most people would behave in the way that the characters here behaved. For that reason, I did not find the book as chillling as other post-apocalyptic/dystopian novels which I have read. However, for anyone with an interest in the genre, this is certainly a worthwhile addition to their collection, and I would recommend it.